Latin America PTO and public holidays by country

When a US team budgets for a nearshore hire, the headline salary is only part of the picture. Paid vacation, public holidays, and statutory bonuses all affect how many days a person actually works in a year and what that person costs you. Getting these numbers right early keeps your budget honest and your team plan realistic, and it prevents the awkward surprise of a key person being out during a stretch you did not see coming.

The good news is that paid leave in Latin America is predictable. Each country sets a legal minimum for annual leave in its labor code, and the national holiday calendar is known in advance. Once you know the figures for the markets you are considering, you can plan coverage, set a fair internal policy, and compare the true cost of a hire across countries. The tool above gives you those figures at a glance, and the sections below explain how to read them and turn them into a plan.

To round out the picture, pair this guide with the hiring cost calculator to see total cost versus a US hire, the time zone overlap calculator to plan live working hours, and the salary guide to set a fair offer by role and country.

The most common mistake when comparing leave across countries is treating every vacation figure as the same unit. It is not. Some labor codes count vacation in calendar days, which include the Saturdays and Sundays that fall inside the leave period. Others count working days, meaning business days only, with weekends sitting outside the count. Thirty calendar days in Brazil works out to about twenty business days off the desk. Fifteen working days in Chile or Colombia is fifteen full business days, plus the weekends on either side.

That difference changes how two countries actually compare. A market with a smaller working-day entitlement can deliver nearly as much real time away from work as a market with a larger calendar-day figure. Before you rank countries on leave, convert to the same unit. The tool labels each country as calendar or working days so you can do that quickly. As a rough rule, multiply a calendar-day figure by five-sevenths to estimate the business days it represents.

None of this should discourage hiring in any of these markets. The point is to compare fairly and budget accurately. When you know the unit, the totals line up, and the modest differences across the region look small next to the savings a nearshore hire delivers against a comparable US role.

When you employ someone in their home country, that country’s labor code sets the floor for paid leave, holiday pay, and any statutory bonuses. You cannot offer less than the legal minimum, and getting compliance wrong can be costly. The practical question is who carries that responsibility. If you set up your own legal entity in the country, your company owns it directly. Most teams hiring a handful of people instead work through a partner so they get the talent without the overhead of foreign payroll and employment law.

With a staffing partner or an employer of record, the partner is the legal employer of record in the country and handles vacation accrual, holiday pay, bonuses, and local filings. You direct the work day to day and pay a single predictable rate. That model is how most US companies hire from Latin America at small scale, and it is what keeps the leave figures in this guide from turning into an administrative burden. You get the benefit of accurate planning without becoming an expert in ten different labor codes.

LavaStaff works this way. We handle the local employment relationship, including paid leave and statutory entitlements, so you can hire across the region with one point of contact and a clear monthly cost. You focus on the work and the relationship; we make sure the compliance underneath it is sound.